Parliament prorogued eight days after the Premier notified the politicians to keep off the track. In September the complete new Board of Directors of the Canadian Northern was appointed. Not one of them knew anything of his contemplated appointment until he received the direct offer of a place. Not one of them was considered because he had any political influence. Every one of them was chosen for his potential value to the board as a man of wide experience in business, in most cases as a large shipper of freight; and in one case because he was of the foremost financiers in the Dominion. Every man hated the idea of political influence being injected into the railway business. If it be of interest to such as love to look minutely into such matters, it was found later that a majority of the Board were old-time Liberals.
We were a real Board of Directors, and I think no more harmonious body of business men ever worked together—I don’t mean in the sense that there were no differences of opinion; but in the sense that there was unity of aim, and a single-minded desire to do the best that was in us for vast properties, in the success of which the national prosperity was very heavily at stake.
The Board had not been at work very long before it discovered that it had been given the task of fusing ancient and modern, and that one of the elements in the projected fusion was not in love with the operation. There was, indeed, some temptation to feel that the situation was expressed by:—
For East is East and West is West
And never the twain shall meet.
Our appointment as the Board of Directors of the Canadian Northern system was followed by an order-in-council appointing us to administer all the Canadian Government Railways, and to that extent removing them from the immediate oversight of the Minister of Railways and Canals, who was liable to be changed as some section men were.
It is as well to copy here the letter which Dr. Reid, the Minister of Railways, wrote to me when he had parted with the direct responsibility for administering the Government lines:
“Now that the Board of Directors has been appointed for the Canadian Northern Railway and that the Transcontinental Railway and the Intercolonial Railway and all other branch lines of railway owned by the Dominion Government are being placed under your Board for the management and operation, I wish to impress on you the understanding that I had with you here last week, namely: The Board must operate the railways without any interference or influence from anyone connected with this Department or any influence outside of it.